A run ‘n gun filmmaker’s POV on the business and creative world of new media and web tv

Professionally produced content to bury amateurs?

November 24, 2007

Business week has an interesting article about the decline in popularity of user-generated video content as professionally-produced videos flood the Internet.

While professionally-produced content will certainly generate more revenues, the area that most people don’t address is the “semi-professional, super-low budget” content. Was Lonelygirl15 considered professional when it first came out? Was Ask A Ninja?

While it’s easy to say that professionally-produced content is going to win over more viewers than amateur clips, the question is what type of viewership will the indie semi-professional types get overall? This tier will have the broadest range in quality in terms of both creative content, and production value. The other question is what type of CPMs will these less credible indie productions get versus the studio-backed productions?